iPod Touch 4 : Are You Ready for the Next iPod Touch?

Apple has given out invites to US tech media for a September 1st special event in San Francisco. According to rumors, official announcement of the new iPod Touch could very well be the reason for the said meet.

And it makes sense. For the past 3 years, September has consistently been the month when Apple announces iPod Touch and its yearly refresh. The first generation iPod Touch was announced in September 13, 2007, the 2nd-generation was unveiled in September 9, 2008, while the 3rd gen iPod Touch was announced exactly a year after.

But what do we know about the upcoming iPod Touch, aptly named by some tech bloggers as iPod Touch 4?

Last May, a working unit of the supposed next generation iPod Touch surfaced in Vietnam. Here are a few photos of the device taken by Tinh Te:

This one looks almost exactly like the 3rd gen iPod Touch, except that...

it has a camera at the back.

It looks ayt -- but is this really the 4th Generation iPod Touch?

John Gruber of Daring Fireball, a man who's always given rather reliable inside scoops on Apple iDevice releases, left this curious comment on a Dell Streak post:

"If you wait a few weeks to buy the Touch, you'll get one with a Retina Display and dual cameras."

A hypothetical camera-equipped iPod Touch could make FaceTime calls. So could a hypothetical camera-equipped iPad. Or even an Apple TV. This notion occurred to me during the WWDC keynote, when Steve Jobs said that Apple expected to ship “tens of millions of FaceTime devices” (emphasis added) this year alone. [...]

Today, a FaceTime-capable iPod Touch would not be a proper replacement for a phone. You could neither send nor receive calls when not connected to a Wi-Fi network, nor send or receive calls with anyone using a device that doesn’t support FaceTime. (The Wi-Fi limitation similarly anchors Skype-equipped iPod Touches today.)

Now, like what I said, this man is no phony when it comes to such matters. In fact, he even ran down the correct specs of iPhone 4 practically a month or so before the phone was leaked.